The last place I worked at sent an email of “congratulations” to the staff for a new annual profit record, and instituted a pay freeze later in the same month because they were trying and eventually did sell to a publically traded company and low payroll looks better in the sale, that proceeded to fire everyone because they were only interested in killing local competition in the market.
Workers working too hard for the owner literally cost us our jobs.
The owners have no bravery and take no risks that labor doesn’t bear the biggest brunt of. This entire economy is a scam that stands on pillars of lies/propaganda.
Side note, who the fuck celebrates their employer making record profits if they aren’t in a super rare in the US cooperative or generous stock dispersment program? The whole point of employment is to provide the least labor for the most reward while they try to get the most labor for the least reward, record profits means I’m working too hard for them.
AdaptHealth was the national conglomerate that swalllowed us and a hundred other local homecare/dme providers for overt competition slaughter btw. Their whole goal was/is to enshittify home healthcare/dme for private profit, and the original ceo had to step down because he committed tax evasion in a European country that actually gives a shit. If they’re in charge of your grandmother’s homecare/dme, say your goodbyes to grandma and make sure they didn’t triple bill.
Oh puh-lease!
Employees don’t risk anything except their career, livelihoods, and homes.
Investors take enormous risks, like a small amount of their vast wealth, and maybe even risk losing a controlling interest in the board. If they really fuck up, they might even risk not being allowed to be a CEO again for a few years.
But go on, try to convince me again that employees deserve a bigger share…
You know, it always amazes me how people equate layoffs with losing livelihoods here. Is that how it is in America? Seems so alien, when where I live, being fired (without cause) would be somewhere between a non-event and a pleasant break using the severance pay.
Often, yes. Outside of more senior level white collar careers, severance is often not guaranteed upon separation here. In many states, “Right to Work” labor laws enable an employer to terminate an employee for nearly any reason. To make matters worse, our health insurance is provided as a benefit by our employers, so losing your job not only means you lose your source of income, but also your means of keeping yourself healthy and getting care should you need it.
And in many cases, even if you do receive severance, the company determines what your separation package includes, and the calculations used to determine the value is kept behind closed doors and obscured from the employee. The packages are presented as non-negotiable, even though they aren’t, and employees being let go are often pressured to sign the agreement in a very short window or risk having the offer of severance rescinded. Often what is offered is a pittance, but generally Americans don’t push back against it. It’s a “better than nothing, I guess” situation.
So yeah - being laid off is a tremendously stressful and life altering experience here for the vast majority of the working and middle class.
Smallest of corrections because the bastards are multiple flavors of bastards: ’
‘At will employment’ is the "fire you for any or no reason so long as we don’t transparently enough do it for/to the small list of protected reasons or qualifying personal attributes for protected class status.
The sick joke is that you can terminate your employment ‘At will’ too, unlike those other work contract places isn’t that liberating!
That one is in all of the US.
‘Right to work’ would be the anti-union version which applies to some states that have gone extra harder than the other ones to prevent the evil evil unions. Plenty of folks better suited than me to explain more around Lemmy.
The sick joke with that one is that you have “the right to work” even when that evil evil union is doing collective bargaining outside with funky signs!
Person who replied to who I replied to; the list of shit Americans ought to be focusing on legislating for is intentionally multi-faceted and obtuse; do you really think such simple insight beyond what you would consider obvious? Our great thinkers aren’t dumb, they’re oppressed.
To double down on the “um actually…”
Right to work laws guarantee the benefits of a union while also removing the requirement to pay for that union. The goal is to have enough people try to get a free ride with the union that it collapses under it’s own weight.
I don’t think that your great thinkers are dumb. I think they are ignored by the masses. As dumb as your voting system is, it is still a functioning voting system. And yet the only change it seems to bring is what the level of intolerance and hate is in your country.
The packages are presented as non-negotiable, even though they aren’t
How are they negotiable? What can the employee threat with if they don’t get a better package?
Whether or not you win additional concessions depends on what information or knowledge you have about an organization that could prove damaging in some respect, and whether or not you can afford legal representation. But it is negotiable.
Really sounds like you should be focusing on having legislated 3 months salary severance like we do instead of thinking about communist revolutions that have zero chance to succeed in the short and medium term (sorry if you don’t think about that, but feels like two thirds of Lemmy do).
Note that we do have a 3 month probationary period where you can be fired for any reason without severance to ensure employers are not afraid to hire people and often the first employment contract is only for a year so the employer has the option to let you go after a year without severance. An extension has to be indefinite though, so it is like an extended probation.
Of course, health insurance is paid by the state while you are involuntarily unemployed and you get unemployment benefits for a limited time after being fired (though that may only be after 3 months when the severance runs out, I am not quite sure how exactly that works).
The problem is, is that our legislation system was built with the intention of stability and to make any changes, all sides would have to somewhat agree. At some point it unfortunately has drifted off course and with everyone polarized other over whose side is right or wrong, it became a game of endless tic-tac-toe of keeping the other side from “winning”
Depends. I’m an experienced programmer. It has never taken me more than a month of casual searching to land the next gig, no relocation.
But if you’re a factory worker in bum fuck nowhere, where the factory is the town, well, layoffs are going to be catastrophic for most, particularly since relocating would almost certainly be to a more expensive area.
Whoosh
Whoosh indeed…
How is it that no company has union busted by handing out shares of the business to their workers?
Bob’s Red Mill did something of the sort and is 100% employee-owned as of 2020. The stated intent was to avoid the investor-driven abuse of employees and customers for profit. It’s not a workers’ co-op, to be clear, but runs under an ESOP.
Organic Valley did that
Amazing… I gotta go see how it practically worked out. Thanks for the example!
Kroger did that as a way to defeat a hostile takeover
Gotta check that out - thanks!!
The shareholders could go poor while labor gets all the money and I still won’t be happy. The shareholders have more power than the workers. Fixing wealth doesn’t magically summon democracy and fix power imbalances.
Power imbalance is the sickness, wealth inequality is a symptom.
All companies need to be owned by their workers.
this is also true for customers - imo customers also need a stake in businesses especially ones that have anything approaching a monopoly.
The obvious solution would be a law that any company of a certain size should have 25% of its board nominated and elected by non managerial workers and 25% appointed by public election or appointed by an elected official.
Or just have the entire company run democratically. And before you say this can’t work let me introduce you to a worker co-op with over $12 billion in revenue annually
I think this depends on the company.
Yes if there is monopoly, for sure, I agree.
Also companies offering essential services.
Most importantly social media. Social media is run by users, and they should have a majority representation. The social media company is just doing an IT service, really.
the workers can be shareholders though. some companies even pay a bit in stock or options. however, dividends are usually very low and most shareholders make their money with gambling the stock market, which has little to do with labor at all.
Sure but giving employees a tiny fraction of the company is not democracy. All workers must collectively own the company. And nobody who doesn’t work there should get a say.
Also the whole thing I just said, it’s not about wealth it’s fundamentally about power.
Last month we had our AGM where they announced record profits, like our company has literally never done better. Just in the difference in profits from last year they could give every employee in the company a $15k bonus.
Then a week later we had a department meeting where they announced 6 people being made redundant as part of a larger wave of lay-off to “keep the company competitive in a challenging market”
The only thing that’s challenging to them is showing some courage when investors ask them what they’re doing to increase profit margins
Still mad that a coworker got fired because a different, unrelated department lost a sale. Sales keeps their bonuses but socialized their loss. Fuck them.
It should be illegal to do layoffs or pay freezes to save money unless the CEO’s compensation is at or below a threshold set proportionally to the lowest paid employee.
Sounds good, until you realize this just encourages them to do a bunch of “for cause” firings before the mass layoff.
We have awarded ourselves a round of bonuses to reflect how well we’ve navigated these layoffs.
The only risk management takes is becoming labor
Set up a co-op then.
Only hire people that invest.
Create your own business and skip investors, problem solved!
And when the zero entry cost business is invented, that might work!
You’re kind of proving their point. Labor takes no risk of loss entering a job because generally speaking there is zero entry cost for starting a job. This is not true for starting a business.
I’m all for more equitable distribution of wealth, but OPs meme exposes a profound ignorance, not some kind of clever exposing of a contradiction.
Not really. Workers are dropped before the owner loses out. The risk is not balanced after a certain startup cost. Certainly not for mega corporations, where the owner who took the original risk is often long gone. It’s now run by MBAs who’s only skill is increasing shareholder value at the expense of all else.
The risk is not balanced after a certain startup cost.
This isn’t even quite true because even established companies can fail after taking additional (or even by not doing so), but you’re basically arguing “once you’ve gotten past the initial risk, there is no risk!” Of course if you discount the risk people take, there is no risk.
And don’t get me wrong, I agree that there is a big imbalance now and laborers are generally getting screwed. But there is a reason I decided to take the path of becoming a skilled laborer instead of s business owner: I don’t want to take that risk.
I can and do easily jump from one job to another, with little worry at all.
once you’ve gotten past the initial risk, there is no risk!”
No, that’s a strawman. The risk is far reduced, not zero. To get to zero, you have to be Too Big To Fail and have the government bail you out.
The reduction in risk is obvious when you see how layoffs work. The CEO gets a big bonus for walking a whole lot of people out the door.
Libertarian types want to start with stories about farmers selling corn by the side of the road, and then expect you to believe the argument still holds when scaled up to Fortune 500s.
You’re nit picking. Whether the risk goes to zero or just very low, that doesn’t change the point that there is generally significant risk to start up, which does not exist with labor. Labor is almost always a zero startup risk, a business is almost always the opposite.
And you’re completely missing the point that this argument doesn’t scale.
You keep saying the word risk, and liberal capitalists do this all the time. Companies limit personal liability, so risk goes to zero there for a bunch of legal issues.
What most people are talking about is money, but not everyone has access to money. If you take two people, one born into a rich family, and another born into a homeless family, the rich kid gets a massive inheritance and “risks” 30% of it starting a business. Let’s say he hires the person born into a homeless family.
The liberal conception here is that the rich person, handed a massive amount of cash for absolutely nothing, deserves the surplus value of labor from the poor person because he “risked” a small part of his inheritance that the poor person never had access to. It’s a wild assertion.
This might seem fabricated, but in the real world this is how it goes, people with capital accumulate more capital. Jeff Bezos “built Amazon” with a $245,000 loan from his parents, and worked out of their garage. He then used that loan and later capital investments to hire people to actually build Amazon.
His parents could’ve just as easily gone the standard capitalist route, and instead of loaning the money instead valuated the company at $300,000 and assumed ~80% ownership for the company. The only reason this isn’t how it played out is because parents don’t like exploiting their kids, there was a biological component at play that disallowed the standard capitalist exploitation from taking place. So they offered him a deal that no capitalist in their “right mind” would offer, because it left Jeff with far too much and the capitalist with far less.
I had a near zero cost business. Basically I needed a computer, phone (already had that) and M365. It was $60 to create the biz myself. Any professional services company falls into this category. So they do exist, even if in small numbers.
What is it that you did? Professional service implies a profession that you’d need training/experience for which is a cost.
Business consulting. Theoretically, anyone can do it without training and experience (although unlikely due to client expectations). But graphic design falls into this category and is more likely to be possible with a portfolio rather than education. Also, I got paid for all of my experience that allowed me to become a consultant, which in turn covered the cost of my schooling - so I don’t really count that. Basically, you can create this kind of business with some elbow grease.
Sorry to say but graphic design clients are dwindling extremely fast. People will constantly have arguments about the value/ethics of AI under capitalism (less work means more suffering in a capitalist society, broken system but that’s what we have). However, in the real world AI exists, and capitalists have access to what they need, even if you don’t want to call what DALLE produces art.
Same goes for videography, programming, essentially anything that requires the development of skill on a computer/digitally has the potential to be massively automated. Even if you believe AI can never match human intellect because of some special sauce inside of our organic sacks, it’s already producing content at the level of professionals. Not the highest level professionals, usually the lowest level ones actually, but without low-level jobs people don’t have clear paths to develop their resumes/careers.
Yeah, I agree we are in a big economic shift (akin to the invention of the tractor that displaced hundreds of thousands of people - side note, why does no one talk about the ethics of the tractor?). I expect AI drive new business models, and some people will lose their jobs or have them greatly changed. But I’m not totally sure that any of that negates the possibility of some (albeit few) low startup cost businesses. They may just look different that they did 10 years ago.
You are right, btw, about a 20 year training gap/issue. Businesses have to figure out how to rapidly develop their people, or they will have no experts standing at the end of the AI machine - risking the overall quality of their work and products.
Here’s how I try to wrap my mind around the changes coming (I know it isn’t exactly the same, but it does put the scope of AI into perspective): Amazon started as an online bookstore out of a garage. People actually laughed at them. Today, they are responsible for huge shifts in the retail and book publishing industries. Lots of jobs were lost, but other jobs and opportunities were created (such as self publishing for low cost). AI is like this, but amplified.
The comparison to the industrial revolution ignores a qualitative difference between this and that; we’re in an age where automation can fully automate away jobs. When the industrial revolution happened, it absolutely did deteriorate working and living conditions for essentially everyone, however humans were still needed. It should be noted that having a system where less work leads to worse outcomes is a fundamentally toxic and broken economic system, but that’s what capitalism is.
This next thought makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but we might actually not have special sauce in our organic sacks. It’s possible that human-level intelligence/expertise is achievable from AI (even if it’s not LLMs that get there), and it’s also possible that robotics becomes as versatile as humans at movement.
Yes, AI and robots are expensive, but you want to know what else is insanely expensive? Humans. I cost my employer $150,000 a year. If they could subscribe to a future GPT6 that out performed me and my coworkers for $1000 a month that would save them a metric fuckload of money. Same thing with buying a super versatile robot, sure it might be like $100,000 for a single robot, but if it lasts 10 years it’s $10,000 a year and can work far longer hours and much more consistently than a human.
What we’re talking about with any non-dysfunctional economic system is utopia, a world where nobody needs to work and everything is maintained, developed, and expanded without human intervention. Under capitalism this utopia becomes a dystopia, it leads to mass starvation, lack of resource distribution, and death.
The entry is literally zero.
There’s lots of 0 entry cost business. Problem is they exist because no one wants to do that work themselves.
You boomers have no idea how life actually works now. You did half the work and put in half the time it would take to get the same results today. You’re privileged and you didn’t work nearly as hard as you pretend you did and you know it. Which is why you’re on the internet trying to prove your fantasy story is real. I know where I’m at and I know where you’re at.
You dumb?
Funny, I’m a millennial
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So you throw out a pile of insults and incorrect assumptions, get proven wrong, and therefore im the moron?
Point to my incorrect assumptions and their proof of wrongness, brainlet. I triple dare you.
If you’re bad at accounting, your business will fail. If you’re bad at marketing, your business will fail. If you mess up one thing early on that sours your reputation with customers, your business will fail. If you have a chronic health problem that prevents you from focusing on your business, your business will fail. If a bunch of other people try to enter the market, but don’t price their product at a livable level, they will drag you down with them and your business will fail.
Avoiding these problems is more about luck than skill. This is not a real solution.
Really now? Wanna become a nanny pimp? Maybe organize a life couch group? Give me a break. All actual service jobs (jobs that don’t require renting or owning an office/place of some kind) require specialized equipment or a degree, and you’ll be hard pressed to find such a business opportunity without strong competition. Most people can’t afford to start a business, nor have the knowhow.
Most people can’t afford to start a business, nor have the know how.
And this is where that risk comes from. I’ll list a pile right now:
- house cleaning/ air b&b
- gutter cleaning
- handyman services
- landscaping
- website design
- graphic design
- coding
- tutoring
- window cleaning
- waterblasting
- graffiti removal
- signprinting
- dropshipping (ew)
Most don’t have the know how, but you know how you get it? You take the risk and try.
Found the nepobaby. There’s so much opportunity to be had if you just have lots of money lying around and don’t need investors to start a company. Damn everyone is so stupid. Why doesn’t everyone just start their own business? Everyone else is just so lazy.
Go fuck yourself
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The day you die I’ll make sure to piss on your grave
Good luck with that!
Don’t bother - they are a significant troll. Block and move on
Access to capital isn’t universal, some people aren’t able to work out of their parents’ garage with a $245,000 loan from them (Jeff Bezos if you’re unfamiliar with his “self-made” story).
Without access to capital, you don’t have access to food or shelter, let alone labor. You’d have to work a full time job (or more), plus create the entire business yourself with no access to any substantial means of production.
It’s not an equal playing field, and it’s not supposed to be. Capitalism is a system setup for capitalists to accumulate capital. Labor and people more generally are commodities to be exploited. The system is functioning exactly as it should, and the working class is miserable because of it.
We live in a service economy, the only mean of production you need is your bloody phone you’re using to post dumb shit online.
You fancy a challenge?
If I can provide a place for you to stay in my home city in the UK, the rent is free for the first 7 days.
All you need to do is come here, with your phone and starting paying rent on day 8. It can’t be that hard to make money right?
Hmu if you’re down.
Thanks, but I already did that 8 years ago when I moved to UK from a poor Eastern European country. You should ask yourself how migrants without money, friends and language skills manage to live a better life than locals who have all the privileges and rights. Maybe it’s not about “means of production”, maybe it’s about YOU.
Me? Im a software developer and doing alright.
Just because I am doing alright doesn’t mean everybody else is.
For every success story of rags to riches, how many failures are there?
Just because you made it doesn’t mean everybody can.
Where did you live when you got here? How did you support yourself whilst finding work, like paying rent and food etc.
Perhaps your tips could help others.
Lol, I thought this was a joke, then I read the comments.
Controversial take, looks like it fell flat.
Personally I agree.
Wow that’s amazing! What business did you create and where did you get all the money to create it?
Sounds like a lawn care business. If I had to bet, lawn care. Probably worked three jobs one as a gas station manager, one mowing lawns, and the third… ?? Uber?
It’s prob a good racket. We can’t ALL mow lawns tho.
Nope - considered lawns though. They make more initially than I do but harder to grow. No pun intended.
Have worked retail - hated it, and won’t touch Uber.
Vending machines then
Also considered - didn’t have the initial capital
Ugh, you don’t run a restaurant do you? I mean that takes capital too but I’ve heard of turn key type setups.
You know like 90% of restaurants fail so that is not really super viable.
Don’t wanna dox myself, but to answer the second question working three jobs then 80-100 hour weeks for 4 years, missing out on birthdays, time with kids, weekends and three years without a single day off.
I then have staff turn around and expect a bonus for doing an extra 4 hour shift they were paid for.
When was the last time you took that risk?
Sounds like you were so focused on a definition of success that you forgot to live.
Sounds like they neglected their family so they can try and gaslight people into neglecting theirs for a business they don’t share the profit from…
That, or like everyone else on the “100 hour grind,” they’re just a fuckin liar.
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Lul, okay clown
Unfortunate thing about the internet - no one ever actually knows for sure. Good thing is that other opinions and internet strangers don’t actually matter - I know where I am, and you know where you are.
I’ll tell you now my staff make 25% more than the industry average with a number of non-standard perks, that last time I put a job advertisement up describing my company I had over 250 applications in a week, most saying they were sick of how they were treated and we sound much better, that my staff have flexibility and understanding that would get them fired at most other businesses. But that means shit in an internet conversation and most have already made their mind up about me.
Good thing is that other opinions and Internet strangers don’t actually matter
…
and I know where you are
LOL. You’re a caricature of yourself. That’s an insane amount of cope.
Ohh you’re one of the good ones, unlike those shiftless layabouts who want to be paid for doing more work
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Sounds to me like I made an investment in my time and effort to give my family the best chance of financial success. Like I made a huge amount of sacrifice to get to where I am just for people who never tried or have any idea to tell me I only care about money and treat my staff like shit.
Almost like its possible to get ahead without exploiting your staff, or being born into money, and no matter what you do people will always accuse you if being and asshole. Great thing about it is that no matter what people may accused me of - their opinions actually mean shit.
But like… what amount of your employees’ generated profit is your sacrifice worth?
When you look at the day to day, you’re not still sacrificing like you did those first couple of years. How do you decide when you’ve reached your return on investment?
Like the meme conveys, employees are taking a risk on you as an employer, spending their time working up the ranks at your company, working in this career path instead of another.
Bleh, nvm…. It’s almost always eat or be eaten w entrepreneur types. If the employees think they are worth more, then they should fight for it, if they don’t then it’s the employers duty to squeeze them for every penny of profit as can be extracted from their dumb lazy worthless asses.
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I think what it boils down is to the agreement in place - agreement, not contract. My team are paid at a competitive rate, and in exchange I expect a certain amount of profitable work completed in that time. Expanding out of that general agreement is where much of these issues lie - my team expect secure work, but I also expect secure staff, and everyone needs to understand that isn’t always going to be the case.
Why can my team decide to stop showing up one day without repercussions (because its illegal) yet I can’t drop them when we have a strong downturn? Why can’t I ask my team to increase productivity (because its too hard) yet expect pay increases when cost of living changes? Why can employees expect returns without risk?
For the record, none of my team are dumb lazy asses and anyone who thinks they are shouldn’t be in business - they either aren’t and your a prick, or they are and you’re a useless boss for keeping them.
No. people are responding incredulously because you said:
There’s lots of 0 entry cost business. Problem is they exist because no one wants to do that work themselves.
And then described the 0 entry cost business as:
working three jobs then 80-100 hour weeks for 4 years, missing out on birthdays, time with kids, weekends and three years without a single day off.
So either one or both statements are untrue, but either way, you sound like an ass, getting high off his own farts.
In that case - clarification. 0 entry cost to start and do, the additional investment was to grow to where I no longer need to be the person on site. I could fire my whole team, shut down the office, sell vehicles, only work the contracts that suit me on 40 hours and sit on 100k a year. But that is all I will ever do and get to. I won’t be able to try anything new, take time away or create the change i want in the world.
If you’re happy that way and don’t look back regretful, good for you.
However, it shouldn’t be necessary to work 100 h weeks, miss birthdays, quality time with family and friends etc. just for the chance of success. Needless to say how high the stakes are regarding mental and physical health and thinking about the effects on your social environment. The latter not just for you but especially for your kids.
It’s a critical problem within the system we live in, if that’s what it takes for someone who doesn’t come from money.
On the other matter:
Almost like its possible to get ahead without exploiting your staff
I think, as long as someone is profiting of someone else, and that relationship is not equally balanced, the one profiting more is exploiting the other. That’s a general opinion, not restricted to you.
Regretful, no. Do I wish I didn’t have to - absolutely, but I’m also aware that no one said I had to enjoy what it took. I lost ~5 years of events, but it gives me soo many more options for the rest of my life and that of my kids. I’m also aware that many others make these sacrifices just to stay where they are so yeah, worth it.
You’re a complete brainless moron hated by everyone you know, in other words.
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